The email said final allocation and gave her nine minutes, and she was on the shop floor, so she checked out from the stockroom with one thumb. Two hundred fourteen dollars with expedited shipping, on the card she had just paid down. She bought two: one to open, one to keep sealed, which was the arrangement she had described to her roommate as being smart about it.

The reprint was announced in October. Same art, wider allocation, and by November the shop had them in a wire bin near the register at forty-nine ninety-nine, where they stayed. She did not sell hers. Selling would have made it a purchase; keeping it kept it a collection. She still checked the sold listings on her lunch break, the way you check a number that never moves.